Our biggest stories of the past week are ...
Risk is a many splendored thing
I was asked to give a pre-dinner speech by SAS for a group of Chief Risk Officers (CRO’s) in Amsterdam recently. Here’s the speech. Good evening ladies and gentlemen. I wasn’t sure how to start this evening, and decided to...
The Financial Services Club Season, London, Spring Season 2013
For those of you interested in the Financial Services Club's agenda, here is our outline for the Winter/Spring Season which was announced at our Christmas Party last night. 15th January 201 An update on EU financial services legislation and associated...
What is the Financial Services Club?
We've just updated our overview of the Financial Services Club. It's now just five slides and tells you all about what we do. If interested, check it out ...
Regulatory nightmares and technology dreams
We had the final 2012 plenary meeting of the Financial Services Club Clearing & Settlement Working Group (CAS-WG) yesterday. Well attended by industry luminaries, the debate was all about the usual stuff: regulations, standards, risk, issues, frustrations and opportunities. What...
How the USA can make bankers feel like Guantanamo Bay
David Bermingham was another recent guest at the Financial Services Club. David was one of the NatWest Three, the three bankers who worked for NatWest in the 1990s and got caught up in the Enron scandal. What happened and how...
We had a good debate this week about the future for multilateral interchange fees (MIFs) amongst the card companies. The argument made for change by regulators appears to boil down to that the card operators and issuers are ripping off...
Unsurprisingly, my Friday blog entry got some backlash on twitter and through direct comments on the blog itself. The original blog entry proposed that people do not want transparency, as unbundling costs makes them angrier than if they are bundled ...
The major general news stories of the past week include ...
A banker for the age: Two-timing insider dealer is sent to prison for two years
- The Independent
The banking industry has not been short of examples of unscrupulous behaviour
in recent years. But Thomas Ammann, the two-timing insider dealer jailed today,
is up there with the best of them.
VIDEO: Banker sleeping rough in park - BBC
BBC Panorama meets a former Wall Street investment banker sleeping rough in a
park in Croydon.
Has America got it in for British banks? - The Telegraph
Britain's banks may face more financial and reputational bruises in America
next year.
Still time to hold HBOS chiefs to account - Financial Times
Renewed efforts to establish precisely what went wrong and who is to blame are
necessary and to be welcomed, writes Ray Perman
HSBC became bank to drug cartels, pays big for lapses - Reuters
(Reuters) - In February 2008, Mexican authorities told the CEO of HSBC Holdings
Plc's Mexico unit that a local drug lord referred to the bank as the
"place to launder money," U.S. prosecutors said on Tuesday, as they
announced a record $1.92 billion settlement with the British bank.
Northern Rock lending blunder lands taxpayers with £270m bill - The Independent
Taxpayers are to fund a £270m “Christmas bonus” for about 152,000 customers of
Northern Rock because of a blunder in which they were not given the right
information about their outstanding loans.
Lawyer says Goldman failed speech software "geniuses" - Reuters
BOSTON (Reuters) - Goldman Sachs bankers failed to raise red flags about
Lernout & Hauspie's accounting irregularities more than a decade ago,
costing speech recognition software pioneers at Dragon Systems nearly all of
their life's work and about $600 million, a lawyer told a jury on Monday in
federal court.
World risks fresh credit bubble, Switzerland's BIS warns - The Telegraph
Asset prices across the world have risen to heady levels not seen since the
credit boom five years ago and may be losing touch with economic reality yet
again, the Bank for International Settlements has warned.
Rise of City 'has cost workers £7,000 a year' says TUC - The Independent
The City's relentless rise has sucked £7,000 a year from the pockets of the
average British worker, a report from the TUC will reveal today.
'Too big to fail' plan outlined by UK and US authorities - The Telegraph
British and US authorities have for the first time outlined a shared plan for
tackling institutions deemed too big to fail, with the aim of sparing the
taxpayer the bill.
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Chris M Skinner
Chris Skinner is best known as an independent commentator on the financial markets through his blog, TheFinanser.com, as author of the bestselling book Digital Bank, and Chair of the European networking forum the Financial Services Club. He has been voted one of the most influential people in banking by The Financial Brand (as well as one of the best blogs), a FinTech Titan (Next Bank), one of the Fintech Leaders you need to follow (City AM, Deluxe and Jax Finance), as well as one of the Top 40 most influential people in financial technology by the Wall Street Journal's Financial News. To learn more click here...
